Site Mobile Navigation

English Wicketkeeper Struggles to Break Long Slump

Every England player will be under pressure to turn things around when the Ashes resumes Thursday in Adelaide, Australia, but none more than the wicketkeeper Matt Prior.

His place on the team is not at risk quite yet, but Prior is deeply aware that his batting failures are among the problems jeopardizing England’s chances of retaining the Ashes, cricket’s most storied trophy.

That batting slump continued in the first test in Brisbane. Prior was out for 0 and 4, lasting a total of only 10 deliveries in his two innings, as England crashed to defeat by 381 runs, one of the largest margins in the 137-year history of the rivalry.

Prior’s problems extend back to the start of the last English season. Since then he has played 15 test innings — 11 of them against Australia — for a total of only 181 runs, averaging 15.08 runs per dismissal. His highest score was 47.

The 15 innings before the slump produced 784 runs for an average of 60.31, and he surpassed 50 seven times, the best coming on a score of 110 not out as he helped England draw a match that it looked sure to lose in New Zealand.

“Obviously, I am in a slump of form. There is no point in hiding away from that fact,” Prior conceded in a column for the Daily Telegraph after the Brisbane test. “The only thing you can do is front up and get stuck in.”

Prior also “fronted up” implicitly to complaints by Andrew Flower, England’s coach, that some batsmen had conceded soft dismissals to Nathan Lyon, the Australian spin bowler. The often-underrated Lyon took Prior’s wicket in both innings at Brisbane.

“I know I got out cheaply in both innings. I pride myself on fighting hard and putting a high price on my wicket, so that was obviously very disappointing,” he wrote.

He admitted to being not only disappointed, but a little baffled. “The hard thing at the moment is that there is nothing technically wrong. I feel in good form. I do not feel that my rhythm is out. I am just finding ways to get out.”

Photo

Matt Prior’s problems batting go back to the start of the last English season.Credit
Saeed Khan/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

The worry is that Australia has figured out how to neutralize a batting style that had previously brought great success to Prior. Its bowlers, in particular the paceman Peter Siddle, have found a line of attack that denies him the cut shots and deflections that generate most of his runs.

It is a huge blow to England, which could previously rely on a flow of runs — most scored quickly — from Prior at No.7 in the batting order.

But if Prior ceases to contribute, the team’s construction is thrown off balance. In recent years, England has been built around six specialist batsmen and four bowlers, with Prior counting as an all-rounder for both his efforts with bat and gloves.

An error has occurred. Please try again later.

You are already subscribed to this email.

Modern wicketkeepers face huge demands today and are expected to make serious contributions with the bat, unlike with earlier generations.

Yet they also remain the game’s great specialists. They are the key figure in the field, the only player involved in every delivery. There is only one wicket keeper on each team. And once established on a team, a successful wicketkeeper is hard to shift. But once he loses that berth, it is not easy to reclaim, and Prior, who has played in 58 consecutive five-day test matches for England, knows that from bitter personal experience. He kept wicket poorly when England toured Sri Lanka in early 2008 and then lost his spot in the lineup to Tim Ambrose. It took most of the year, 10 matches and some struggles by his successor before Prior was reinstated in the lineup.

Prior is much more reliable with the gloves than he was five years ago. But he is 32, an age where a prolonged slump may be seen as the start of the end of a career.

If Prior keeps on failing with the bat, England may have to ponder switching to Prior’s backup, Jonathan Bairstow, who bats well enough to have played 12 tests as a specialist batsman, or to the creative stroke play of Jos Buttler.

If he needs reassurance that 32 is not too old, Prior need only look at Brad Haddin, his Australian opposite as both wicketkeeper and vice captain. Haddin is 36 and looked washed up as a test player when he was dropped in 2012, but he has returned as a vital veteran aide to skipper Michael Clarke. Haddin’s scores of 94 and 53 were vital as Australia turned around a slow start for its victory in the first test in Brisbane.

Both men will likely face a tough five days in Adelaide. The refurbished stadium has started using a drop-in pitch, where the field is grown outside the stadium and is trucked in and dropped into place in the break between the Australian football and cricket seasons. The introduction of that has changed Adelaide Oval into a high-scoring ground where long innings are the norm, putting immense mental and physical demands on the wicketkeepers.

“It looks an absolute belter of a pitch,” said Lyon, a former member of the Adelaide grounds-keeping staff. “It’s going to be a great challenge for both teams.”

As a wicketkeeper, Prior could wish for something more favorable to his bowlers. But as an under-pressure batsman, he just might rejoice.